Primary Menu

Our Homeschool Kindergarten Curriculum

January 25, 2017 at 12:31 am

A lot of you have asked, and here it is! A complete write-up of Lena’s homeschool curriculum choices, including some information about Classical Conversations. I wish I had found a blog post out there like this when I was looking at curriculum, so I’m excited to summarize this for those who are a year or two behind me.

First of all, this year our goal was to ease into formal education and to have a lot of fun along the way. Children learn best at this age through listening to stories, playing, and living life in a loving, structured environment. So we don’t necessarily do school every weekday (although we do try), and we don’t spend more than about two hours total on school each day (including reading aloud). It’s just kindergarten! In California, it’s not even required.

Knowing myself, though, I wanted some accountability. I am much more likely to look at a free morning and say, “Yay! Let’s go to the zoo!” rather than sit down with schoolbooks and science experiments. So we signed up to be a part of two programs to enhance our homeschooling experience.

The first was to sign up with a homeschool charter school. These, I think, are unique to California. By signing up for FREE, you are given at least $500 per semester to spend on educational materials and classes, you are assigned a California state-certified teacher who will meet up with you monthly to check on your work and give you guidance, and you can sign up for optional weekly enrichment classes, field trips, and activities. There are multiple charter schools in southern California; Julian, Dehesa, The Learning Choice, and Inspire are some.

We signed up for Inspire Charter School, and I have been very happy with this choice. With Inspire we received $1600 in the fall and $1000 in the spring to spend on curriculum and classes — with the only stipulation that they not be affiliated with religion in any way. (Hence our secular kindergarten curriculum. The texts themselves do not mention God or faith, but of course our worldview and beliefs influence our approach and teaching.) With this money we have purchased almost all the materials listed below, and Lena has taken Monart classes, piano lessons, and gymnastics lessons so far.

Our teacher meets us once a month at our local library, and she always goes over the “I Can” statements that address what California kindergartners are learning each quarter. I can write numbers 1 to 10. I can recognize food as a source of energy. I can retell a story. This way I can also teach Lena these things and make sure she’s not behind in or missing any area. We are always ahead of what the state expects, but it’s helpful to have anyway.

The other thing we signed up for is Classical Conversations, a homeschooling support community that is distinctly Christian. I’ll write more about this another day, but for now we are very happy with and grateful for this support, inspiration, and group of friends.

Last but not least: I read reviews of all curriculum on Cathy Duffy Reviews, a website that I highly recommend for all homeschool curriculum.

And now, our curriculum choices!

With Inspire, we were required to teach four subjects: Math, Language Arts, Science, and History. Here is what I chose for each one:

MATH

For Math I chose Math-U-See after comparing it to many programs including Saxon, Life of Fred, and Singapore Math.

Math-U-See is a complete program that includes a fun and simple workbook as well as manipulatives (those snap-together blocks pictured above), a teacher’s manual, and even a songbook and CD. Truthfully, I have barely used anything except the workbook, which is very straightforward. Lena really likes it, too.

I bought both the Kindergarten (Primer) and First Grade (Alpha) programs together, and I anticipate that we’ll start the First Grade one before the end of the year. For First Grade I’d also like to try Christian Light Education Mathematics which looks engaging and interesting with a lot of shorter workbooks. The program is written by Mennonites, so the word problems are all about farm chores with cute, simple illustrations.

For reading, we have only been using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book is taking us quiiiiiite a while. Our experience definitely not been ‘just 100 days and your kid is reading,’ as I think we’ve been plugging through it for about a year and a half now and we are on Lesson 75 (of 100, obvi). I like the commonsense way that new sounds and words are introduced, and how each lesson reviews and then builds upon previous lessons.

For beginning readers, we’ve used the Bob Books, which are fun and quick reads. I’ve been loving books by Margaret Hillert from the library, too, which are simple, colorful, and repetitive. They were published in the 1970s and our library has about 50 of them. We also have a collection of Dick and Jane stories, which is what my dad used when he was learning to read. Gil loves them just as much as his grandfather did 50 years ago!

SCIENCE

I didn’t want to go overboard on science because there is a lot to cover in the Classical Conversations curriculum. So I bought just one science kit and one book. The Magic School Bus is about the level of a kindergartner, and it’s colorful and fun.

As a busy mom, science kits are great. Everything I need + instructions arrive in one box, and voilà… science! I’ve also looked into signing up for a monthly craft/science subscription like Kiwi Crate or Little Passports, but I haven’t bitten the bullet yet.

HISTORY

I heard a lot of good things about The Story of the World history curriculum, which includes a read-aloud history book, an activity manual with all kinds of coloring pages and craft ideas, and a CD on which Jim Weiss (our favorite book narrator) reads the history book out loud. There are four volumes: Ancient Times, The Middle Ages, Early Modern Times, and The Modern Age. For our first year with a kindergartner, one volume (just The Middle Ages) has been enough. I like the curriculum enough to want to invest in all four volumes, though, which potentially will last us through middle school because the activity manual includes assignments for kids of all ages, from coloring pages for Lena to writing assignments for older children.

This is not a Christian curriculum, so the charter school is fine with us using it. However, it is told from a classical education worldview and is very sympathetic to Christianity. In addition, the author is a well-known Christian homeschool educator.

Of course, as anyone who does Classical Conversations knows, there is a LOT of history to learn for that program alone! But there is so much to say about Classical Conversations that I will save it for another day.

EXTRAS

I invested in a few art materials, but we haven’t used these too much. Lena got a lot of art education from her Monart class, and she gets a weekly art lesson at Classical Conversations as well. She has, however, really enjoyed these colored pencils! We’ll use the other two books in the photo more in future years, I think.

And there you have it! What do you think? Do any of these books look familiar to you? Any recommendations for other things I should consider for First Grade?

I’m not sure yet if we’ll be homeschoolers forever, but for now… this is our life, it is challenging, but it has also been wonderful so far. I love our slower pace of life in which our whole family works and learns together. Are you homeschooling? Have you found the same thing?

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

About Becca

I'm Becca: wife to Elliott and mother to three, soon to be four! We live in Charlottesville in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Our last homes were San Diego & Italy. I write this blog to encourage & to remember. I'm glad you're here!

16 Responses to Our Homeschool Kindergarten Curriculum

Great post! We’re getting geared up for kindergarten for our oldest this fall (gulp!) and have settled on homeschooling for the next year as well. I have been so overwhelmed with curriculums and philosophies, and most people we’re around take their homeschooling VERY seriously. Anyway, this was super helpful to see someone who is taking the homeschool approach from a more relaxed perspective I would much rather pursue. The charter school thing is super intriguing! Too bad it sounds like it’s only in Cali.

Looking forward to hearing your take on Classical Conversations! I’ve heard wonderful things about it as well, but I have been curious to know exactly how it works in the kindergarten phase because it has sounded fairly intensive with the memorization and get togethers.

CC *is* intensive, but we have enjoyed a lot of aspects of it. It’s definitely not for everyone, and I am not its biggest fan. If there is another co-op with fun classes and a social aspect that is more relaxed, you might enjoy that more. However, you should definitely try to go to an Open House at your local CC to get a good look at it. We really enjoyed doing that last year!

Blessings in all the decisions… it’s overwhelming, but then it’s just your life, and you’re still kinda overwhelmed, but you’re doing it and it’s working and it’s FUN!

Such a fun stage! I recognize those blocks that you’re using for math. Eric’s teacher used them in the classroom when he was in 2nd grade. ( a very long time ago!!) And the Christian Light materials…that’s where our Sunday School materials used to come from when I was a girl. Memories! :) Happy learning to you and your littles!

Wow, really?! So many connections, and these materials go back more years than I expected! I suppose you probably know about all the Miller family books about that Mennonite family that teach prudence and Proverbs and so on? We loved those books growing up!

Oh there is so much more out there now….makes me want to go back and do it over! My kids did Monart. We loved it!!!!! Rainbow Resources is a great resource-they put out a GIANT catalog that this long done homeschooler still likes to drool over!

Great information! I’ll have to check a few of those out. I will admit, I’m a bit jealous that you get a stipend from the state! I would die to have those math manipulative. :) So good to see what you are following.

Look for things on eBay! That’s what I’ll do next year, and that’s where I would go to sell anything I didn’t want or need anymore but had spent good money on. I am sure you could find a lot of these resources that hardly get touched (teacher’s manuals, manipulatives) and then would just have to buy the workbooks that the students actually write in.

Always fun to hear what others are doing! We’re in the Bay Area and also doing K with our oldest…a bit differently, since we didn’t go the charter school route. We share similar philosophies, though. I love the individuality of homeschooling. :)

What are you using for piano lessons? I never got any instrument education as a child, and would love to provide some to Loretta in a few years when she is kindergarten age. But I wouldn’t even know how to pick a piano teacher!

We knew of a local piano teacher (former homeschooler, current college student) who is well-respected and liked, and she works with our charter school as well. And she comes to our house! I would ask around for local recommendations first and then go from there. But get a piano first… that took us a while!

You could also go to a local music school for lessons and Loretta could try out multiple instruments before committing to one. I did this with Lena last semester (with charter school money… it was pricey) and ended up feeling like it was a waste of time. She was barely 5 years old, and she didn’t know what she wanted. I needed to guide her more. So piano it is, with lessons in our home, in a place where she is comfortable and relaxed.

Such fun to see what you are doing and remember back to all our K years. Slow and steady with lots of stories, play and fun is perfect – I wish I had done less workbook stuff in the primary years. Life experiences and hands on is what they remember. D and D actually took a class with Mona Brookes and grew up with the artist on the cover of her book – we remember that art lesson.
Gil might like the Small books by Lenski (Farmer Small, The Little Farm, etc) and Cowboy Sam books by Chandler.(They are old school readers and out of print but worth the search.) Lena might enjoy the Sophie books by Dick King-Smith. Those were the ones that came to mind first – so many great books out there.

For my teaching and tutoring, I also use a lot of materials from the Moffatt Girls on TeachersPayTeachers.com. She is a Christian former teacher turned stay at home mom who homeschools her daughters and sells the curriculum she creates. Her stuff is AWESOME – super fun and engaging activities that provide effective practice. She has “No Prep” bundles – that are basically print and go.

My mom always talks about Sonlight Curriculum as well – not necessarily to buy but you can look at their book recommendations for each age level.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

[…] of this information comes from different things Lena has learned in Classical Conversations. In my last post, I discussed our kindergarten curriculum, and I mentioned that we joined Classical Conversations as […]